Shaykh Gibril Fouad Haddad is a well-known Lebanese-American scholar and religious leader and has emerged as one of the clearest voices of traditional Islam in the West and is quickly earning a reputation as a respected translator and interpreter of the sacred Islamic texts.

Born in 1960 in to a middle-class Lebanese Catholic family in Beirut, Lebanon, and schooled in England, he declared his shahadah in 1991 as a graduate student at Columbia University in New York where he obtained his PhD degree in French literature.

The same year, he met his teacher, Mawlana Shaykh Nazim al-Haqqani of Cyprus, from whom he took the Naqshbandi tariqa. He taught at the State University of New York at Stony Brook for 2 years and in 1997 moved to Damascus where he studied the Islamic disciplines for 9 years.

Among the teachers he has been honoured to read with are Shaykh Dr. Nur al-Din `Itr, Shaykh Adib Kallas, Shaykh Wahbi al-Ghawji, Shaykh Muhammad al-Ya`qubi, Shaykh Adnan al-Majd, Shaykh Mu`tazz al-Subayni, Shaykh Dr. Samir al-Nass, Shaykh Dr. Wahba al-Zuhayli, Shaykh `Abd al-Hadi Kharsa, and Shaykh Muhammad Muti` al-Hafiz. He also holds ijazas from Shaykh Dr. Muhammad ibn `Alawi al-Maliki and Shaykh Husayn `Usayran, the last of the close students of the pious Qadi Shaykh Yusuf al-Nabhani, as well ijazas from more than 100 shaykhs from Algeria to Yemen - Allah reward them all and continue to benefit us through them.

Shaykh Gibril is an accomplished and influential Islamic scholar, religious leader, author, and Arabic translator of classical Islamic texts. He is also a teacher on the traditional online Qibla Islamic institute (formerly SunniPath) [website]. He was listed in the inaugural edition “500 Most influential Muslims” and was referred to as “one of the clearest voices of traditional Islam in the West”. He is also a contributor to the website eshaykh.com, which offer guidance and traditional teachings on various aspects of Islam.

Shaykh Gibril Haddad has written, translated and published many books, among them being:

* The Four Imams and their Schools: Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi’i, Ahmad (2007)

* Al-Arba’un fi Fadli al-Shami wa-Ahlih wal-Hijrati ila Allahi wa-Rasulih (peace be upon him) (“The Excellence of Syro-Palestine and Its People in Emigrating to Allah and His Prophet (peace be upon him)